French satellite firm Eutelsat raises stake in Bharti-backed OneWeb to 22.9%

French satellite firm Eutelsat has raised its stake in Bharti-backed OneWeb from 17.6% to 22.9%. “Eutelsat Communications has exercised a call option on a portion of the latest OneWeb funding round subscribed by Bharti, for a consideration of $165 million, taking its shareholding from 17.6% to 22.9%,” the company said in a statement.

The transaction whose financial terms were similar to Eutelsat’s initial investment of $550 million is expected to be completed by year-end 2021, subject to regulatory authorizations, it said.

Following this, Eutelsat will become the second-largest shareholder in OneWeb after Bharti with 30%.

“We are hugely excited to grasp this opportunity to deepen our commitment to OneWeb. The significant progress it has made in the run-up to its now imminent entry into service, together with the vote of confidence demonstrated by the commitment of both its investors and future customers, makes us even more convinced of OneWeb’s right-to-win in the low earth orbit (LEO) constellation segment,” said Rodolphe Belmer, Eutelsat’s Chief Executive Officer.

OneWeb, the low-earth orbit (LEO) satellite communications (satcom) company has raised an additional $500 million from Bharti for the funding of its first-generation constellation and a $300 million capital investment from South Korea’s Hanwha.

The satcom company has reiterated its commitment to launching satellite broadband services in India by next year, as well as in other geographies. It has also received a national long-distance (NLD) license from the Department of Telecommunications (DoT).

OneWeb and Hughes have recently signed a strategic partnership to deliver LEO services in India and the US to government, enterprise, and other customers.

OneWeb has partnerships with AT&T, Peraton, Northwestel, and BT. It has raised $2.7 billion since November 2020, with no debt issuance.

Meanwhile, Elon Musk’s SpaceX will shortly apply to the Indian government for a license to launch its Starlink satellite broadband services in the country and is aiming to touch 200,000 active terminals by December 2022, said its newly appointed India head Sanjay Bhargava.

In an earlier social media post, Bhargava had said SpaceX will focus on ten rural Lok Sabha constituencies for 80% of the Starlink terminals shipped to India.

In his first exclusive interaction with media, Bhargava told ET that his immediate mandate, following an hour-long meeting with Musk, is to engage with CEOs of India’s top telcos, banks, hospitals, academic institutions, and non-governmental organizations (NGO) to ink potential collaboration pacts to boost rural broadband connectivity.

At the same time, Canadian Telesat and Nelco, a Tata group company, are likely to kickstart commercial satellite communications or satcom services together by 2024 with a focus on offering affordable tariff to ring-fence business-to-business (B2B) customers in a developing market that would also have the US-based SpaceX and UK-headquartered OneWeb stakes.